Zoe woke with a start, sweat-slick skin chilling quickly against the cool air. She groped at the light switch, then scanned her bunk for remains of the horror she had so recently escaped. War nightmares. The only kind she had ever had, and the only sign of weakness over which she truly had no control. She had been on Serenity only a few months, but already she was growing resigned to the fact that the change of scene had done little or nothing to ease her troubled mind.

Something had to be done. She hated that she feared sleep, that she dreaded the cold embrace of her empty bunk each night. She pulled a robe around her body, tried to ignore the way it pasted against her damp chest. She knew one place where she could find a way around the nightmares.

His bunk wasn’t even locked, so she simply pushed the ladder down and lowered herself in. The light she let in from the corridor revealed him, naked as far as she could see, splayed unselfconsciously in a tangle of sheets. He looked so pale, almost angelic in the faint blue light.

Zoe had no qualms about what she was about to do. She had seen the way he looked at her. On the bridge, in the mess room - sidelong glances at her curves, sometimes even blatant stares at her full lips. It was probably the whole warrior-woman thing, that cliché that Zoe had come to accept with little more than a sigh. But right now she couldn’t care less about his motives. And she knew he was unlikely to question hers, given what she was about to offer him. No reason he should know that he was merely a distraction. A warm body to replace the images of friends dead and cold in the mud of the war.

Quietly and with catlike grace she moved to the bed, climbed on top of his hips, straddled the unsuspecting sleeper. He woke with a snort and she almost laughed, but the sound caught in her throat at the look that overtook his features. It was inexplicable. Surprise, a twinge of lust, but most unexpectedly...concern. He looked as though he were about to comfort her rather than tak